


retourne-toi

by levlinwinlaer



Category: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu | Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22833727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levlinwinlaer/pseuds/levlinwinlaer
Summary: It would have been sufficient had Héloïse looked at her, and nothing else. But instead she came forward, in a few halting steps, until Marianne could smell her, taste the sweetness of her breath.“Marianne,” she said, simply, and Marianne understood.Ten years later, Marianne returns to Milan.
Relationships: Héloïse/Marianne (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)
Comments: 131
Kudos: 530





	1. au début

**Author's Note:**

> in love with héloïse

Of course Marianne had seen her. Marianne saw everything.

 _‘Nearly_ everything,’ Héloïse would have said, then perhaps amended, ‘almost as much as I do.’

Marianne had heard that they were playing Vivaldi in Milan, and out of some self-flagellating tendency had rented a carriage and spent twenty dizzyingly uncomfortable hours bumping along the roads. She had tucked a dress- a nice dress- in with her plain smock and simple dress, then cursed herself. In the end, she left it in Venice.

She hadn’t quite believed Héloïse would be there. Vivaldi had lasted minutes at most, her fingers stumbling across the keys of the harpsichord. It had been a fleeting moment in a sea of fleeting moments, where they could not possibly have held onto every one.

And yet there she was. Striking as the day they parted, still incapable of keeping her hair in check. Alone, for some reason. The husband had died? Marianne hoped he had, though that was hardly something to wish upon a person.

The first violin began, its melody precise. The rest of the orchestra joined, swelling into song. The man next to Marianne sneezed. Héloïse- she was crying, and though Marianne could not hear her she could tell this was not silent weeping. She looked only ahead. Her breath stuttered in her chest. Look at me, Marianne thought (begged), look at me, you’ve done it before. Why not now? _Retourne-toi_ , Héloïse had said. _Retourne-toi_.

But what would she say? I love you. Run away with me. Let us never be parted again or I will sink into the river and be buried by the sea. There is nothing in the world that has mattered to me as you did, as you do.

No. None of that.

Marianne curled her fingers into tight fists, wrinkling the fabric of her skirt, and tried to breathe. When the last note sounded and the audience rose to their feet, she saw Héloïse stay sitting. She was still crying. Her hands were folded, neatly, over her skirts.

Marianne ran. She bunched up her dress and shouldered her way past the polite aristocrats on the balcony and sprinted through the gilded hallways- and here was what Marianne didn’t see.

Héloïse, turning, eye caught by a flash of red.

Héloïse rising to her feet, excusing herself with the barest threads of courtesy.

Héloïse making her way through the same hallways, walking, walking, running.

Héloïse, out of breath at the entrance of the orchestra, alone. Not crying anymore. Steely-eyed now.

Marianne found work in a wealthy woman’s home, in one of the quiet aristocratic neighborhoods in Milan. Lady Segreti was cheerful and flighty, and above all deeply in need of company. As she posed she chattered on about all sorts of things. The weather in Rome, the latest ridiculous fashion in London (she hated the English with a passion), the gossip in Milan. Marianne listened and offered occasional noncommittal grunts, which was about all that was required.

It was nearing the second hour of their third session before Lady Segreti asked anything of her.

“You are staying in Milan?” she said, without moving a muscle in her face. She believed firmly that any change in her pose would result in a deformed portrait, which Marianne had once laughed at and now did her best to encourage. It was tremendously funny to hold a one-sided conversation where the person doing all the talking spoke like a corpse.

“After the portrait is done? Perhaps.”

“You should,” the lady said, with a definitive twitch of her eye. Marianne ducked her head and hid her laugh with a cough, which Lady Segreti frowned at. “Sick, Marianne?”

“No, Madame.”

“Good. There’s a sickness going around among the-“ she flicked her fingers ever so slightly- “working people. Very nasty.”

Marianne hummed. “Really?” Héloïse would hate this woman, she decided.

She was halfway through the next stroke of the paintbrush before she realized, abruptly, that Héloïse probably did know the lady. They were both Milanese aristocrats with unspeakable amounts of family money. They had to have brushed shoulders a few times. Possibly even called on each other at home. With an undefined feeling rising in her chest, Marianne thought- Héloïse might have sat in this very room.

“Vomiting, coughing, chills,” Lady Segreti was saying, entirely unaware of Marianne’s epiphany. “The Mancini nurse- you’re painting there next, aren’t you- has taken ill as well. Oh, that poor child! His mother can’t nurse, you know.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “This is entirely improper to share, Marianne, but I must, I really must. They say she can’t nurse because-“ a pause for effect- “she has no nipples.”

“Oh, my,” said Marianne, who had nothing else really to say.

“She’s always been an odd duck, you know. It really wouldn’t surprise me if the rumour was true. You French people are known for such things, no?”

Marianne was too well-trained to smear the paint of the next stroke. But very nearly. “She is French?”

“Oh, yes. French as they come and ugly as can be. She says wine like she means God, and drinks instead of praying.”

Not Héloïse then, unless she had undergone immense changes in the week or so that had elapsed since what Marianne had privately termed the Vivaldi Incident. The hope that had lodged in her stomach removed itself.

“Of course all sorts of French ladies come to Milan. Most of them leave, some of them find husbands. I hear none of them can nurse babies. Would you mind changing the background to blue? I hear it suits my complexion better.”

Marianne pressed her tongue to her teeth to keep from screaming, and nodded. “Of course, my lady.”

When finally the painting was finished, Marianne took her payment and the promised praise of the lady's friends and slipped out through the servant’s door. It was still morning in Milan, and the streets were nearly empty. Marianne watched the few carriages go by, nodded to the passing servants who clutched baskets of bread and sweets. She felt suddenly an acute pang of longing. For Héloïse, perhaps. Maybe just for what she had felt with Héloïse. Contentment. The aching sort of love.

“Marianne!”

Marianne turned and saw a blur of plain-coloured skirts.

“Sophie?”

Sophie- for it _was_ her- came to a stumbling stop in front of Marianne and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. “Oh, Marianne,” she said, out of breath, “I wasn’t sure if it was you but I had to check. I’ve missed you dearly. This place is awful and I can still barely speak a word of Italian.”

“It’s good to see you,” Marianne said, and meant it. She looked well, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked. “You live in Milan now?”

“Yes. Madame sent me here. Wanting something familiar for her daughter. Have you-” she peered at Marianne- “seen Héloïse?”

It was unfair, really, that even the sound of her name could jolt Marianne like it did. “No,” she managed.

“I’m sure she would be happy to see you,” Sophie said.

“I couldn’t possibly intrude,” Marianne said weakly. “Is her family home?”

Sophie made a face then, an expression that Marianne could not quite read. “Please,” she said. “She has not had family since you left. Now come on!”

She took Marianne’s hand and guided them down a different street. Marianne tried to protest, but her efforts were futile.

“I know you want to see her,” Sophie said. “In those seven days she smiled more than she has the last ten years.”

“She has been unhappy?”

Sophie blew out a sigh. “Yes.”

Marianne did not like how that knowledge twisted her stomach. “And how have you been?”

“Missing France, mostly. Though the people are nice here. And the food is good. But the wine is horrible in comparison.”

“They must have French wine in your house,” Marianne said.

“No. The monsieur forbids it.”

Cold dread. Jealousy, twisting unbidden through her chest. “The monsieur?”

“He is not the worst, but I don’t like him. Neither does Héloïse.”

“Oh.”

“Here,” Sophie said, and they came to a stop now in front of a grand house, where two stone lions sat keeping guard at the top of the steps. “We’ll go through the side entrance,” she decided, and led Marianne down a hidden set of stairs to a door, which she unlocked with a key on a chain round her neck.

The inside was well-lit and plain, the walls painted white. Sophie turned a corner to a kitchen, where she set a small box on the counter, and smiled. She looked positively delighted to be ruining Marianne’s life in such a way.

“Come,” Sophie said, and Marianne, heart in her throat, followed her up another set of stairs, through a door, down a hallway and to the right. Sophie held a finger to her lips, and knocked at a door.

“Héloïse,” she called. “There’s a guest to see you.”

Something shuffled in the room. Marianne heard footsteps, and then, in French, unmistakably Héloïse- “I’m not taking guests now, Sophie.”

“You’ll want this one.”

More footsteps, each one louder than the last. Marianne breathed in, then out. She felt a peculiar calmness descend over her in the last second before-

The door swung open. Héloïse was frowning slightly, annoyed, radiantly beautiful.

“Who is calling at-“

The words died in her mouth. Marianne could not have moved for her life, caught in the sunbeam of Héloïse’s gaze. Dimly she noticed Sophie slip away.

It would have been sufficient had Héloïse looked at her, and nothing else. But instead she came forward, in a few halting steps, until Marianne could smell her, taste the sweetness of her breath.

“Marianne,” she said, simply, and Marianne understood.

“Héloïse,” she said. Just to say it. Just to be heard.

Héloïse’s eyes closed for a moment, then snapped open again, as if she was afraid to waste any time. “Come in,” she said, and walked backward into the room, her eyes still fixed on Marianne. Like a magnet Marianne followed.

They sat on the small couch- a loveseat, she thought, hardly daring to ponder the irony- and drank each other in. Neither spoke. Too much to say.

“You were at the orchestra,” was how Héloïse chose to break the ten-year silence. Blunt as ever, then. Marianne knew what she was asking. _Did you see me, I know you saw me, why did you run_?

“I didn’t know what to say.”

“Turn around.” Héloïse didn’t blink, her eyes fixed on Marianne’s. “You could have asked me to turn around.”

“And then what?” Marianne asked, suddenly angry. “You leave your husband? Run away from Milan? Come live in Paris with me?”

“You say it as if it is impossible.”

“It is impossible!”

Héloïse’s lips parted, and the shutters came down over her eyes. Marianne sighed, the anger leaving her in an instant.

“Forgive me,” she said. “I am still- I am still growing accustomed to you.”

“Have you tried not to think of me?”

Marianne laughed hollowly. “I have thought of little else.”

Héloïse smiled. Traitorously Marianne thought of kissing her.

“You are staying in Milan?”

“I am.”

“How much longer?”

“A week. I have been commissioned for a portrait.”

“Of who?”

“A Lady Mancini.”

Héloïse drew in a breath. “They live next door.”

Hope surged, stupidly, in Marianne’s belly. “Oh.”

“Their nurse is ill,” Héloïse said, almost casually. She could never pull off a conversational tone, not since the day Marianne had met her. Her eyes always betrayed her with their intensity. “It would be unwise to stay in close quarters with her.”

“Yes,” Marianne said.

“It would be convenient, then, to find alternate lodging.”

“Yes,” she said again. She knew what Héloïse was saying, what she was asking of her. Héloïse leaned forward, the barest motion. Marianne mirrored her.

“Sophie has missed you greatly.”

“I have missed her too.”

“Have you?” Héloïse asked. So this was the game they were playing, then.

“Like the sun in darkness.”

“Like Orpheus and Eurydice?”

“Yes,” Marianne breathed. “Like Eurydice.”

Héloïse looked at her mouth. Just the slightest movement of her eyes, but it was like being shot in the heart.

“You’re breathing through your mouth,” she said. And the arch of her brow said the rest. _I still know you. Yes, I do._

“I," Marianne began, then realised abruptly that she had already decided. "Where will I put my things?”

Héloïse smiled, a full staggering smile this time. “I will show you. In a minute.”

“And how will you explain it?”

“Exactly as I just did.”

“And then what? When the portrait is done.”

“I don’t know.” Héloïse looked at her, levelly, not pleading. Never pleading. Marianne thought again of kissing her, and kicked herself. She knew exactly what she would do, even as she considered her options. She had hardly even had a choice.

“Show me,” she asked. Giving in.

The expression now on Héloïse's face was a flower opening, and a fist in the eye.

"Follow me," she said.


	2. deux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> stay safe out there!

The room itself was much nicer than Marianne had expected. She had barely enough time to conjure in her imagination the dim clutter of the servants’ rooms she usually stayed in before Héloïse rose to her feet and, with a nod indicating Marianne should follow, led her to down the hall to an ornate door.

“Here,” she said, and opened it. Inside the walls were painted eggshell blue, lit by the morning sun coming through a window, a lavish bed set against one wall. It made Marianne’s shoulders ache in jealousy just from looking at it.

She looked back at Héloïse and found her eyes, instantly. They were close, far too close. Trapped side-by-side in the doorframe. If she reached out she could touch her cheek, her waist, the shadow her chin cast on her throat, perhaps even her mouth.

Marianne very nearly shivered at the thought. She needed Héloïse to blink, or look away, or just do _something_ before she fell to pieces. Héloïse, predictably, did nothing of the sort. She shifted closer. Opened her mouth to say something.

“Signora?”

Héloïse’s mouth snapped shut, and she turned to face the intruder. Marianne let out the breath she had been holding, swaying ever so slightly.

“Bianca,” Héloïse said. She was irritated at the interruption, Marianne saw, but she hid it better than she would have ten years ago.

The maid, a young woman in white, bowed her head. “Your morning tea is ready.”

“Thank you. Set another place for the table, please. We have a guest.” Héloïse spoke Italian with a slight accent, not quite pronouncing the ‘r’s. Marianne found it unspeakably charming.

“Marianne,” she said, holding out a hand. Bianca, with a glance at Héloïse, took it. Marianne saw Héloïse’s mouth go tight around the corners and felt a secret thrill.

“Bianca,” said the maid, flushing slightly, then let go of Marianne’s hand and retreated down the hallway with speed. Héloïse looked after her with a dark expression.

“Don’t,” Marianne told her, teasing (teasing!) and ducked swiftly into the room before any indignant rejoinder could reach her ears. She tossed her things beside the bed, sighing in relief at the weight taken off her back. When she looked up Héloïse was watching her from the doorway, the barest hint of a smile in her mouth.

“What?”

“You never greeted me.”

Marianne frowned. “Didn’t I?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to greet you now?”

She saw Héloïse’s throat move as she swallowed. It was the oddest thing to be pleased by, but Marianne found a flicker of satisfaction in knowing that Héloïse was just as nervous as she. “Yes,” Héloïse said.

Well, then.

Five steps, and they were face-to-face. Marianne lifted a hand, her breaths coming short and shallow. She remembered the warmth of Héloïse’s skin ten years ago, the downy halo around her arms and cheeks, the solid feel of her jawbone beneath the skin. She wondered if it was still the same.

At the first touch of Marianne’s fingers to her cheek Héloïse’s eyes fluttered shut, and she took a shaky breath. Marianne let her hand glide down, just barely making contact. Her painter’s eye took over. Years ago, her father had taught her the muscles of the face, and now she noted them, catalogued each in her mind with its particular shape and shadow. Down the masseter, across to the risorius, further down to the platysma just above the jawline. Up to the zygomaticus. Now, slowly, across to the orbicularis oris, and-

Héloïse’s lips parted, and Marianne’s fingers slipped, of their own volition, down onto her mouth. She could feel Héloïse’s breath, warm and damp, burning her fingertips. Unwittingly Marianne thought back to the dim bedroom ten years ago- “open your mouth”, the taste of Héloïse’s fingers, the stickiness of her skin against the sheets- and looked up to meet Héloïse’s gaze. Her eyes were dark. She regarded Marianne as if she wasn’t sure whether to eat her or run from her.

Marianne pulled her hand away then, and leaned in close. She felt rather than saw the intake of breath as she put her mouth to the apple of Héloïse’s cheek. One of them was trembling. No. Both.

Quickly Marianne kissed her other cheek, then withdrew, stepping back into the range dictated by propriety. Héloïse stared at her for a moment, unmoving. Her ears were tinged pink. They were as familiar to Marianne as the sunrise.

“Breakfast is downstairs,” Héloïse said suddenly, then turned on her heel and marched off down the hall. Marianne watched her until she disappeared from sight, then sighed, slumping back against the doorframe. A laugh built up inside her chest. It was just all so ludicrous.

Breakfast was ordinary in comparison. Bianca brought in two cups of steaming coffee and a small plate of warm pastries, made eye contact with Marianne, blushed furiously, and departed to go hover in the kitchens. Héloïse gave both of them a dark look. Marianne could only laugh, and take a pastry.

Héloïse ate in quick messy bites, dipping each bite of biscotti in the black coffee. The biscuits crumbled and went soggy in seconds, leaving crumbs floating on the surface of the espresso. Marianne wrinkled her nose.

“No coffee?”

So Héloïse had been watching her, as always. “I don’t like the taste,” Marianne said.

Héloïse hummed to herself. “I didn’t know that.”

How trivial a thing not to know. They were strangers, really, in the catalogue of small things. But what were the small things? Marianne imagined an enormous encyclopedia somewhere, an encylopedia of Héloïse, containing a list of things that had happened, a list of favourites and dislikes and petty quarrels that Marianne would never know, and not for want of asking. Simply for want of time. Knowing there were better things to do, things that mattered more. Knowing that all she needed to know Héloïse would tell her.

When they were done, Héloïse pushed her chair back from the table and yawned.

“A game?” she asked, and Marianne smiled. In this they certainly knew each other. She pulled a pack of cards from one of the pockets of her painter’s dress (a maid’s dress, really, but she had paid a seamstress to sew in hidden pockets) and tossed it down on the table. It caught Héloïse off guard, but after a moment she grinned, wide and almost childlike, and snatched up the pack.

“I’ll shuffle,” she said.

Marianne wasn’t a cheat, and nor was Héloïse, but neither was above accusing the other of rigging the game somehow. Marianne won the first few, of course, because Héloïse was out of practice, but then Héloïse won three rounds in a row- which never happened, Héloïse was awful at card games because she was always laughing whenever Marianne lunged to slap a card- and Marianne threatened to flip the table.

“Come on, come on,” Héloïse chanted, and flipped her card. Queen! Marianne slammed her hand down on the table, knocking Héloïse’s out of the way, and Héloïse cried out in indignation.

“I win, cheater,” Marianne said, and swept the cards toward her. When she looked up, Héloïse was grinning. Marianne’s smile overtook her mouth without permission. Their knees bumped under the table.

Three knocks came in quick succession and soon after them followed Sophie, nudging the door open with her hip. She was holding a plate of little pastries. Héloïse saw them and lit up, delighted.

“ _Choux à la crème_!” Sophie said, and offered the plate. “I bought them this morning, and look- good luck! Marianne comes.” She set the plate down, snagged two to tuck away in her apron, and scurried off with a grin tossed over her shoulder

Héloïse was inspecting the little pastries with possibly undue excitement. Marianne wanted to press her nose to hers and taste the sweetness of her smile for as long as time would give them. She settled for raising her eyebrows.

“We never get these in Milan,” Héloïse said, and picked one up.

“Very special, then.”

“Yes.” Héloïse held her gaze, her head tipped slightly to the side. Marianne felt that they were not talking about choux anymore. She looked away to diffuse the tension, and when she looked back, Héloïse was examining one of the little pastries, her eyes blue-grey in the mid-morning light.

“ _La pâte à choux_ ,” Héloïse said. “ _Du crème_.” She held up the _choux_.

“A miracle,” Marianne said drily.

“The pinnacle of cuisine,” Héloïse agreed, and bit into it, eyes rolling back in exaggerated ecstasy. Marianne laughed despite herself.

“How does it taste?”

Héloïse paused. She set down the remainder of the _choux_ , the cream inside spilling onto one of the cards. Marianne’s heart began a staccato march against her ribs.

“Would you like to know?”

“Yes,” Marianne said, and without any fanfare, and not slowly at all, Héloïse kissed her. Her mouth slanted soft and warm and open against Marianne’s. She touched her cheek, ran her thumb over the tickle of her eyelashes, wondered if this was what Orpheus had felt when he was with Eurydice, if this was what had made him turn around.

Héloïse drew back very slightly, and murmured, her breath catching Marianne's bottom lip, “We will waste no time now.”

Marianne tipped their heads together. “No time I am with you is wasted,” she said, and kissed her again.


	3. trois

Scarcely had Héloïse shifted closer in the love seat to frame Marianne’s face between her hands when a knock came, and Sophie leaned in around the door.

“Héloïse,” she said, her voice urgent. Marianne jolted; Héloïse’s hands fluttered uselessly for a moment before falling to her sides. They had both forgotten the rest of the world, and now it came crashing back like the tide.

“Yes,” Héloïse asked, a touch breathless. If Sophie noticed, there was no sign.

“Lucia has returned,” Sophie said.

Héloïse went ashen. Quickly she stood, smoothing down the front of her skirts and the stray hair that Marianne’s fingers had tugged from their tie. “She is meant to be in Florence for a week longer.”

“She had taken ill. The monsieur sent her back with a friend.”

“Ah,” Héloïse said, and glanced at Marianne. Just a quick look, but her worry was palpable. “Wait here,” she said, and followed Sophie out the door.

They were gone for what seemed like hours. Marianne stood and went to the window to look out. She cursed herself for being so reckless, so foolish, for forgetting that Héloïse was a married woman. That she had a child, now. Perhaps more than one child. How could Marianne not know such a thing? She had not ever really thought of Héloïse having children, even as she saw the girl’s face painted next to Héloïse’s. It was such an odd idea, two pieces that never quite fit together. Two years now since that portrait had been done. The girl was older, then. Marianne wondered if she would look like Héloïse. Some selfish part of her hoped she would not.

The door opened again, and Sophie came in. Héloïse was just behind, her hand resting on the shoulder of the girl. A straight strong nose, a small pink mouth, the same jaw, hair a touch more gold. Not quite the same eyes. That would have to be good enough for Marianne.

She smiled, politely, and extended a hand. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” said the girl. Her voice was high and fluting, her French accented. Seven years old, perhaps? Marianne was not very good with children’s ages.

“My name is Marianne," she said.

“Lucia,” the girl replied. They shook hands. She had a firmer grasp than Marianne would have expected, so she made a show of wincing. The girl giggled, losing her aristocrat’s poise for a second. She did not have Héloïse’s smile, not exactly. Marianne wondered- which of her limbs, which of the little pieces that made up a person- how many of them were Héloïse? And how many were someone else?

“You’re very strong,” Marianne said admiringly, and crouched so she could take the girl’s hand and inspect it. “What do you do for a living, hm? Lay bricks? Lift up houses?”

Another fit of giggles. “No! I have schooling, with my tutors. What do you do, to be so-” she struggled, briefly, for the word- “not strong?”

“She’s a painter,” Héloïse said. Marianne looked up at her, and found her expression unreadable, though she was smiling for Lucia’s benefit.

“A painter! Mama and I had a painter come do our portraits once.”

Marianne nodded, a touch ruefully. “Yes, that was not me.”

“No,” Lucia agreed. “He was nice, though. He brought bonbons. Are you here to paint me?”

“She’s here to paint Lady Mancini,” Héloïse cut in. Her voice was darker than usual, almost flat. She did not quite seem a mother to Marianne; her hand had dropped from the girl’s shoulder and she had gone stiff.

The girl deflated momentarily, then perked up again. “Well, why don’t you stop by and paint me! And Mama. If she wants to be painted by you. Or not. But why would you come here if you’re not painting us?”

Marianne met Héloïse’s eyes over the girl’s shoulder, and Héloïse made the sort of face that meant she knew exactly what Marianne was thinking, and was warning Marianne not to say anything. Not that Marianne would. Seven-year-olds kept no secrets.

“Marianne is an old friend of ours from France,” Sophie offered from where she was tidying the table. “She’s staying here while she paints, because the Mancini nurse is sick.”

“Ah, okay. I want to go to my room now. Sophie!”

Sophie, shooting a quick look behind her at Héloïse, followed the girl out. When the patter of their footsteps faded out of earshot, Héloïse dropped into her chair. She smiled, almost, and reached out. Marianne took her hand. She dared to imagine, just for a second, a world where Lucia was their child, where every night Marianne could kneel before Héloïse and let her head rest in her lap.

“She is not like you,” she settled for saying.

Héloïse gave the barest shrug of a shoulder. “She is stubborn.”

“Then I have spoken wrongly.”

Héloïse laughed. “I am hardly stubborn.”

“You are bullheaded,” Marianne said.

“Am I,” she said, not quite a question.

“Indisputably.” She bent til they were eye-to-eye, a breath apart. “But…”

“But,” Héloïse echoed, her smile threatening to break out from her mouth.

“Be serious,” Marianne said sternly. The smile grew, helplessly, crinkling the corners of her eyes and, oh, Marianne adored her.

“I am being serious,” Héloïse lied. “But what?”

“But this,” Marianne said, and kissed her quickly, a brief press of mouths. She pulled back and Héloïse’s eyes had closed, the smile a ghost creasing her cheeks. Héloïse’s hand pressed against her belly, slid up her back, between her shoulder blades. Her fingers curled warm and solid around the nape of Marianne’s neck, and she tugged. With no resistance Marianne shifted forward, and kissed her again. When her mouth opened against Marianne’s she tasted like coffee.

“I am not the same,” Héloïse whispered, finally. Marianne drew back to look at her and found Héloïse’s eyes bare and intense, skimming over her face.

“I am not either.”

She paused, then cupped both hands around Marianne’s cheeks, seeming to have decided something. “Tell me about your studio,” she asked.

“I teach women to paint,” Marianne said. “Portraits, mostly. Some landscapes. Nudes, occasionally.”

Héloïse hummed. “Who sits?”

“I do."

She laughed, a surprised, delighted sound. “You sit for the nudes?”

“No, I hire.”

“But they paint you too.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a favourite?”

Marianne paused a fraction too long. “No,” she said at last.

“You’re lying.”

“Annabelle," she conceded grudgingly. "She is the youngest.”

“Why the favourite?”

“She draws me melancholy,” Marianne said. She pictured the cool open space of the storage room where the paintings were hung to dry, Annabelle holding up one of the unfinished portraits, asking, ‘this is her, right?’ Marianne had always liked the ones that were wise beyond their years.

“Have you been melancholy?”

At that Marianne looked away. The softness on Héloïse’s face was unbearable; ‘have you been melancholy’, as if she had been anything else in the months after leaving, she had been a _wreck_ , so bad that even her father had fussed over her, and for all the stoicism that he showed Marianne could see that she had worried him.

“I liked the painting,” she said, instead.

“Which one?”

“ _Vingt-huit_.”

“You saw it?”

“It was-“ Marianne searched for the right word for some time. In the end she settled. Héloïse would understand. “It touched me.”

“I had hoped you would see it.”

“And here I am.”

“After two years.”

Marianne paused. Was it-? “My father said to me," she began. Then stopped. Considering. "After I returned, he said, imagine yourself at the end of your life, and you can only remember three things before you go. But in exquisite detail. Reliving it all. What do you want to remember?”

Héloïse leaned toward her, open and wide and waiting. “What were they?”

“My father. My painting.”

“And?”

Marianne sighed. “You know what I said.”

“I do,” Héloïse said. She looked satisfied. Sad. She brushed her fingers over the shell of Marianne’s ear, and the hunger returned. “I would have said the same.”


	4. quatre

Just before noon Marianne left the grand house that now was Héloïse’s, and went over to the yellow house next door. Her father had given her a carrying case for her birthday some years ago, made of strong sturdy oak, and it was this that she had brought to Milan, and this that she now carried over. As for Héloïse- she had kissed Marianne once more before she left for the market, and promised that tomorrow they would go together. Even now there was still a faint heat that lingered at her mouth.

Marianne knocked, and a well-coiffed woman, her hair tinged with grey, opened the grand wooden door. She regarded Marianne with inordinate suspicion.

“Who calls?” she barked.

“Marianne,” said Marianne, and then added, “the painter.”

The woman studied her, then apparently deemed her suitable. “Yes,” she said brusquely. “Right this way.”

She was led to a small waiting room, lit only by a single north-facing window covered by a curtain. Out of habit she held up her hands to make a frame, watching the dim spill of light over the wood panels of the walls. The house was immaculate, each inch polished and gleaming. Marianne could hardly find a single mote of dust in the air. She suspected that the woman who had opened the door- a housekeeper, perhaps?- had something to do with it.

“Marianne?”

“Signora Mancini,” she said quickly, her hands dropping. In the doorway she found a tall, imposing woman, her hands folded in front of her stomach. She looked tired, but stately nonetheless, her hair drawn back into a sharp bun.

“This way, please, Marianne,” said the lady, and left the room. Marianne scrambled to pick up her case and follow her, down the hall and into a larger room, its windows covered by yet more curtains. Here the lady stopped and looked not quite at Marianne, as if she was waiting for appraisal.

“May I?”

The lady nodded, once. Marianne stepped carefully around her and put her shoulder to the enormous oak chair- the one piece of furniture in the spotless room- turning it toward the westerly window. She pulled aside the curtains over the window, and without being asked, the lady swept aside her skirts and sat. The light caught her face well. She blinked in the warmth of the sun as if she had not seen it in years.

“Good,” Marianne said, and opened the latch of her carrying case.

Lady Mancini was silent even as Marianne set up her easel, and prepared the canvas, and tied her painter’s smock around her waist. When Marianne stole a glance at her, feeling almost ashamed of doing so, she saw that her eyes were fixed on some faraway point above the easel.

“ _Regardez-moi_ ,” Marianne asked, and caught herself, adding- “ _per favore_.” She had forgotten, almost, that she was still in Milan. Nonetheless the lady’s gaze snapped to her. She looked surprised.

“ _Vous êtes française?_ ” she asked.

 _“Oui._ And you?”

For the first time the lady smiled, just a bare wistful turn of the mouth. “From a little town outside Paris.”

“I remember.”

“Really? How?”

“From Madame Segreti.”

“Ah,” the lady said, and Marianne looked up from her canvas just in time to catch the tail-end of a roll of the eyes. “She did not say too much, I hope.”

“Just a little,” Marianne said, electing not to mention the comment about the nipples.

“She never says just a little.”

Marianne’s laugh caught her off guard. “No, I suppose not.”

A silence followed, but it was comfortable now. Marianne sketched out the eyes, the slight curve at the end of the nose, the strong chin.

“What are you doing to the-” she began, then stopped. Marianne looked up and found her eyes closed, brows pinched together. “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I do not speak often.”

“ _La toile_ ,” Marianne said gently. _Canvas._ “Your husband does not speak French?”

“My husband is long dead,” the lady said. When Marianne, aghast, tried to offer her condolences, she waved them aside. “And my daughter hardly speaks at all anymore. She thinks of Milan as home.”

“And you don’t speak with your neighbour?”

“My neighbour?”

Marianne’s hand faltered; she drew back the brush before it could smear the paint.

“In the house right by yours,” Marianne said. She remembered Héloïse’s new family name but hated the sound of it; had never said it beyond the once that her father had told her, when she had repeated it back to him. It had curdled her stomach to let it fester in her mouth.

“The woman? Does she come from France?”

“Yes.”

“Strange,” said the lady. “She speaks Italian with my daughter when she comes.”

They said little more after that, Marianne preoccupied with her thoughts. Héloïse knew Italian, of course, though Marianne did not remember if she had known it ten years ago. It seemed an important distinction. Marianne imagined Héloïse, bent over a book of Italian, wearing that slightly irked look she had when she was reading something tiresome. Héloïse, navigating an unfamiliar land, all alone but for Sophie at her side. Héloïse, meeting the man who was to be her husband. Marianne wondered, and it twisted at something inside her, what Héloïse had said to him upon their first conversation. _Now you possess me a little_ , Héloïse had told her. She had been right. As usual.

After a long while a cough jolted Marianne from her reverie. She looked round and found the housekeeper standing in the doorway.

“Signora, there is a caller for you,” she said, and shot Marianne a look, mutually understood as ‘get out of the house.’

“Thank you, Madame,” Marianne said, bowing to the lady, and packed up her case. Briskly she was escorted down the hall, the canvas left behind to dry the first coat. Passing by the parlour she caught a glimpse of a familiar head of hair, and paused, resisting the housekeeper’s attempt to bundle her outside.

“Madame,” she called teasingly, and Héloïse turned from where she was inspecting the bookshelves. She greeted Marianne with a smile and a dip of her chin.

“Ah, the neighbour,” Lady Mancini said, from where she had silently followed them to the parlour. Marianne startled, and Héloïse hid her amusement in a polite smile, inclining her head with a crisp “Signora Mancini.”

“Ah, don’t, my dear,” the lady said in quick cheerful French. “I know your secret, hm?”

For a moment Héloïse’s smile froze on her face, her eyes fixed on Lady Mancini’s broad grin, but Marianne shook her head in a minute gesture and the smile was natural again.

“What secret?” Héloïse inquired.

“I have had a Frenchwoman for a neighbor all this time!” the lady exclaimed. “It has been so long since I last spoke. You are like a breath of fresh air, Marianne.”

“Yes,” Héloïse agreed, and threw something like a wink at Marianne. She couldn’t quite wink, Marianne noted- more of a flutter of her eyes, where one closed just before the other. It was immensely endearing. Marianne had never before been winked at like that.

“Oh, excuse me.” Lady Mancini took Marianne’s arm in a motherly manner. “My dear-“ this to Héloïse- “this is Marianne. My daughter hired her to paint my portrait.”

“We have met before,” Marianne said. A great understatement, but Héloïse nodded nonetheless.

“ _Oui_ ,” Héloïse said. “Marianne’s father painted my mother.”

“Ah bon? Fortunate that we should all know each other!”

“Signora,” the housekeeper cut in. She was watching from the entryway, her perpetually unpleasant expression still in place. “Your daughter asks for you.”

“Excuse me,” the lady said, her expression souring. She touched both their arms and swept off again into the house.

The housekeeper seized her chance and deposited them both outside, with infinitesimally more politeness toward Héloïse. “Same time tomorrow,” she snapped, in the rural accent, and the door closed.

It was afternoon now. Marianne observed the carriages trundling along the streets, the horses twitching in the sticky heat. In the distance she could hear the soft melody of a street musician’s tune. Beside her Héloïse was still, listening for the faint trail of music. After a moment it faded out, and Marianne watched Héloïse’s eyes open.

“A busker,” Héloïse said. “They sing in the market square. _Demain_. I’ll take you.”

She picked up her unwieldy skirts and took the stairs down from the door two at a time. Marianne followed her, expecting that they would stop between the stone lions and go back into the house, but instead Héloïse marched past, her stride unbreaking. She was still taller than Marianne by a thumb’s-length, and Marianne was weighed down her painter’s case, so Héloïse reached the end of the street long before she did. She turned and watched Marianne come to a stop. They regarded each other for a long moment, and Marianne became suddenly aware of the loose strands of hair that curled and stuck under her jaw in the heat of the day. She let them be, and Héloïse’s mouth started to curl up.

“I can get you a horse,” she said.

“I don’t need one.” Marianne puckered her mouth and blew the hair out of her face with a puff of breath. The errant strands floated down, and clung amiably to her cheeks this time.

“ _Ah bon_?” Héloïse was failing miserably at tamping down her smile- barely even trying, really. “You’re sure?”

“The case is heavy,” Marianne said.

“Give it to me, then.”

“In that dress?”

Héloïse nodded. Marianne looked pointedly at what seemed to be a thousand skirts hanging about her ankles, and Héloïse just scoffed.

“Come on. We’ll carry it together.” She held out an open hand, and, after a moment’s hesitation, Marianne offered her the handle. When Héloïse took it her fingers folded over Marianne’s, and half the weight was lifted.

Héloïse lived in a neighbourhood wealthy enough to be all but silent in the afternoon, and as they staggered along, learning the cadence of each other’s steps, and accusing the other of skipping a step, and trying to topple the other over, there was not a person in sight to witness their laughter, nor how Héloïse’s fingers intertwined with Marianne’s around the handle.

"Come on," Héloïse said, between gasps of laughter. "Just a few blocks further."

"I'm out of breath," Marianne complained.

"Ah, the luxurious life of a painter," Héloïse cooed. "Has it ruined you?"

Marianne's eyes narrowed, and she came to an abrupt stop, heels digging into the sidewalk. Héloïse's momentum carried her one step further before she was yanked back by her grip on the case.

"Coming from you, Mademoiselle Aristocrat," Marianne said. "Eating _choux_ all day and talking about poetry."

"That's what _you_ do," Héloïse countered, and grabbed the handle with both hands. Marianne, not to be outdone, put her other hand over Héloïse's. They were close now, inches away from each other, and neither of them was putting much effort into pulling.

"At least I work."

"At least I have fun."

"Do you?"

Héloïse lifted a shoulder in a shrug. "Not right now."

Marianne gasped in mock outrage. They were both grinning, twenty years younger.

"I'll race you to the end of the street," Héloïse said suddenly.

"What? We're both carrying the case!"

Héloïse, in lieu of a response, took off running down the street, dragging Marianne behind her. Marianne lost her footing for a brief moment, but her next step found solid ground, and soon she had caught up with Héloïse and they were sprinting side-by-side down the street, the case swinging wildly between them, and at the road when they came to a stop they were both panting, laughing, and Marianne could have run forever.

"I won!" Héloïse proclaimed.

"You cheated," Marianne said indignantly, "you started early, so you couldn't have won."

"You weren't paying attention."

"You didn't even count!"

"Shut up shut up someone's coming-"

Héloïse transformed in an instant into Héloïse the Lady, her hands folding over her stomach, as a carriage passed by. When it turned the corner and disappeared out of sight, she reached again for the handle.

"Come on," she said. She was still a little winded. Her hair had fallen out of the elaborate updo, and the lines around her mouth were perfect semicircles framing her smile. There was an dull pain in Marianne's stomach, but she dismissed it as a cramp and not the sudden feeling of _temporary temporary temporary_. Seven days, she thought. Seven days. That would have to be enough.


	5. cinq

They came to a stop in front of a small unremarkable building, tucked in between two houses that were much more modest than Héloïse’s but grand nonetheless.

“This is it,” Héloïse said proudly, setting down the carrying case. Marianne regarded the building with curiosity. It seemed only to be a door and a large window with the drapes pulled down. Its plainness stuck out like a sore thumb among the middle-class Milanese houses.

“What is it?” she asked.

Héloïse, in lieu of an answer, turned around.

“Undo my necklace,” she said. Marianne complied, her fingers brushing against the down at the nape of Héloïse’s neck. The clasp opened easily, and Héloïse caught it in her cupped hands. When she turned back around, Marianne saw that the fine gold chain bore a small key at the end, and it was this that Héloïse used to unlock the door.

Inside the ceilings were higher than Marianne had expected, and even just by the light coming in through the door she could see the neat bookshelves running parallel to the side walls, and, in the open space, two large structures draped by formless dark tarps.

Behind her she heard the soft clunk of Héloïse setting the carrying case down. Moments later she felt Héloïse’s hand press absentmindedly against her shoulder as she passed by. Marianne watched her wander about the room, looking for something- she let out a triumphant little sound, and grasped at a long rope dangling near the wall. With one, two, three tugs, something came free, and light poured in from above. There was a window set in the ceiling, Marianne realized, or rather, it _was_ the ceiling. Through the glass she could see the sky, an ocean of blue but for a few merry clouds bunched together. When she looked back around the room she found it well-lit by the sun alone. There was a fireplace in the wall across from the bookshelves. Those two strange tarp-covered objects, each about waist-high and twice as long, were positioned across from each other. Across the room there was a closed door. Marianne took a breath of cool air- the smell of bookmaker’s glue and old paper, hewn wood, the faint taste of sawdust lingering still in her mouth.

“It’s mine,” Héloïse said, crossing behind Marianne once more to close the door behind them. When she came back into sight she was watching Marianne closely, gauging her reaction.

“A bookshop?”

“A library,” Héloïse corrected. “I buy books sometimes, in the market. But most of it is repairs.”

She went over to one of the tarps and drew it back. Beneath it was an oak desk, its sides lined with drawers. Héloïse opened one of these, and with purpose removed a worn leather-bound book that Marianne surmised was her current project- Ficino’s _De vita libra tres_ \- and a set of tools. She handled them with unmistakeable familiarity, as Marianne held her brushes.

“Excuse the dust,” said Héloïse, and then she paused, a strange look coming over her face. In an almost unrecognisable tone she said, “I have not been here for many weeks.”

Marianne did not know what to say. She pressed her lips together, and went to Héloïse’s side. Slowly she touched the back of her hand, and Héloïse blinked rapidly, watching their hands as if they were entirely foreign to her.

“I-“ she began, and stopped, frowning.

Marianne looked about the room, searching for anything that might lift this odd melancholy. After a moment she seized upon something.

“Your favourite?”

Finally Héloïse looked to her. “Hm?”

With a meaningful tilt of the head she indicated the shelves. “Which is your favourite?”

Héloïse’s eyes cleared. She smiled as if she knew exactly what Marianne’s intention had been, but humoured her nonetheless. “Tartuffe,” she said. “By Molière.”

“A comedy?”

“ _Oui_. You do not think I am funny?”

Marianne narrowed her eyes in mock irritation, and Héloïse laughed, the tension dissipating as quickly as it had come. She turned her hand over, her fingers slipping between Marianne’s, and squeezed, once.

“Let’s go back,” Marianne said, softly, and Héloïse stiffened again, her fingers tensing.

“I don’t want to,” she said.

“But-“

“I don’t want to,” Héloïse repeated. Clipped. Precise. With an edge.

“It’s almost suppertime,” Marianne said, and Héloïse turned to her abruptly, the tools clattering from her hand. The other pulled its way easily out of Marianne’s loose grasp.

“Why do you want to go back there so badly?” she asked, eyes blazing. Marianne had no response. “ _Pourquoi_? Answer me!”

“It’s your home,” Marianne said, and instantly knew it was the wrong thing. Héloïse’s face shut down, losing all its warmth. She was Héloïse the Lady now, blank and polished to a gleam.

“Fine, then,” she said. “Let’s go back to _my home_.”

She went to the door and threw it open, leaving the carrying case in her furious wake. Marianne pressed her hand to her forehead and suppressed the urge to curse. Why on earth had she said that?

She let out a long breath, picked up the case, and followed.

When Marianne rang the bell at the servants’ entrance- she had yet to go in through the actual entrance, knowing that if she did so she would unequivocally have walked in the same place as the husband- Sophie opened the door right away. From her face Marianne knew that she had seen Héloïse already.

“What did you do,” Sophie sighed.

“I’m a prize fool,” Marianne said in response, and Sophie stepped back to let her over the threshold.

“You’re not,” she said. “Just- working it out.”

“And Héloïse?”

“Upstairs, in her rooms. She doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

Marianne’s expression must have changed, because Sophie’s eyes softened. “Come to the kitchen,” she said. “You can have supper with us.”

 _Us_ turned out to be a collection of some twenty or so servants, gathered around an enormous wooden table in a large room adjacent to the kitchens. Some of them spared Marianne a look- Bianca gave her a smile- but the chatter continued, and Sophie steered her to an empty spot on the bench.

“Gio, Bartolomeo,” she said under her breath, indicating the two men in neat collared shirts sitting near each other at the other end, their matching hats side-by-side on the table. “They're the footmen.” Now the man by them, his shirt splattered with mud. “The stablemaster, Lorenzo.” The girls next to him, occupying the rest of that side of the table. “Stella, Bianca, Annamaria, Marzia, Sibilla, Maria, and the other Maria. The maids.” On their side of the table, “Gian, Flavio, Stefano, Pio, Vito. The manservants.”

“ _Salve, buonasera_ ,” said the man sitting beside Marianne. He offered his hand with a polite smile, and Marianne shook it.

“ _Buonasera_ ,” Marianne returned.

“Arturo.”

“Marianne.”

“Ciao, Arturo,” Sophie said. In French, she added, “Stable boy.”

“French? What secrets are you ladies hiding?”

Before Marianne could even flinch, Sophie said, “Oh, plenty."

“Not too much gossip about me?”

“We’d never run out of things to say about you,” Sophie shot back.

At that moment a tall cheerful-looking man came in from the kitchen, carrying an enormous pot. Behind him followed two women, each balancing plates piled with bread and salad. The people at the table made way, jostling each other with familiar affection, and distributed bowls down the line. Sophie snagged a tranche of bread for each of them. The man set down the pot, groaning good-naturedly at the weight.

“No signora today?” called one of the women- Marzia, Marianne guessed- and Sophie shook her head.

“Not today,” she said.

“Damn shame."

“Never had a better stew,” chimed Bartolomeo. The tall man, upon hearing that, slapped the back of Bartolomeo’s head, and he nearly went face first into his plate. “Except yours, Marsilio,” he added, wincing.

“That’s more like it,” said Marsilio, and, picking up a plate, came over to sit in the empty space next to Sophie. He smiled at Sophie first, then Marianne, and offered his hand. Marianne shook it.

“Marianne,” she said.

“Ah, Marianne!” He beamed as if she was an old friend. “ _Comment allez-vous_?”

“ _Bien,_ ” Marianne said, surprised. “ _Et vous?_ ”

“ _Fantastique_ ,” he said cheerfully, then shouted, so abrupt it made Marianne jump, “Oy! Bartolomeo!”

Bartolomeo, in front of them, had taken the lid off the pot, and was inspecting its contents. Marsilio swatted him out of the way and picked up an enormous wooden spoon, which he used to ladle soup from the enormous pot into Sophie’s bowl. After hers he took Marianne’s bowl, and then made the rounds of the rest of the table. Surprised at this unusual ritual, Marianne looked curiously at Sophie, who simply smiled. When Marsilio returned, he sat next to her again, and picked up the conversation as if nothing had happened.

“So you have come from Paris?” he asked. His French was accented- learned late in life, then. But very good.

“Yes, to paint the ladies in Milan.”

“And the signora?”

Marianne could feel herself going pink. “No.”

Marsilio frowned, his eyebrows knitting together. “So-“

“She’s just staying here while she’s in Milan,” Sophie said, between bites. Saved.

“Well, if you need anything, you know who to ask for.” He thumped his chest with exaggerated grandeur. “Marsilio, king of the kitchens.”

“Oh, shut up,” Sophie said to him in familiar French. He laughed, and turned to talk with one of the women across the table. They leaned together nonetheless, and- the pieces slotted together. Marianne’s eyes went wide.

“Sophie,” she hissed.

“Hm?”

“You’re married?”

Sophie blinked, as if she had almost forgotten. “Oh. Yes. Did I not tell you?”

“All you said was you didn’t speak Italian and that there’s no French wine in the house.”

“Mm. And it’s too hot.”

“It _is_ too hot,” Marianne agreed, remembering the sticky heat of the afternoon. But that moved her thoughts to Héloïse, her sharp playful smile, and-

“We were married a few years ago,” Sophie said. She gave Marianne a knowing look. “It’s not so awful. Since then.”

“He learned French?”

“ _Oui_.” Sophie smiled prettily. She was older now but her face was still round, cheeks rosy, and with that smile she looked barely twenty again. “I taught him. His accent is horrible.”

“It is,” Marianne agreed, and they laughed.

Dinner passed pleasantly enough, but by the end Marianne could feel the exhaustion creeping up. Sophie, as if she had read her thoughts, stood up and excused them after the meal was done.

“Come on,” she said, and led Marianne down a long twisting route, to the bedroom that Héloïse had brought her to before. She hesitated a moment, then pointed at a door down the corridor. “The madame’s rooms are there,” she said. “If there should be any trouble.”

“Thank you, Sophie,” Marianne said, her eyes still fixed on the door. Sophie muttered something to herself that Marianne didn’t quite catch, and disappeared off down the hall.

 _Not to be disturbed_ , Marianne remembered, and, with a quiet breath, went into her room. She would find her again tomorrow.


	6. six

As it turned out, Héloïse was only to be found when she wanted to be found.

In the morning she was not at breakfast, and Marianne ate alone aside from Sophie, who bustled in and out of the room with plates of pastries and pitying looks. Marianne, in helping her clear the table, thought of her father. _Always stand up in a better mood than when you sat down,_ he always said, and even when she was young enough to tolerate pinching of her cheeks he hadn't. Just stared, level and measured, til she flopped back into her seat. Too late for that now.

When the Mancini housekeeper saw Marianne she granted her a glare that was even more hostile than it had been the day before.

“You’re early,” she said, as if it was an offence punishable by death. Marianne gave her the most apologetic smile she could muster, and after a moment the housekeeper opened the door further and waved her brusquely into the sitting room. “Wait here,” she ordered. “I’ll tell the Signora that you’ve come.”

Lady Mancini appeared minutes later, as perfectly coiffed as ever. They did not speak today, aside from the cursory greetings and Marianne’s occasional instructions. The lady seemed preoccupied with something. Every so often her gaze would drift away, somewhere beyond the window, and Marianne would have to cough to retrieve it.

The one thing about painting in silence was that it left too much space to be filled. Marianne did her best not to think of Héloïse. But what else was there to think about? Now knowing she was near, that she was at last within reach, that with every new second by her side the tiny fissures in Marianne’s memory were filling. This she had forgotten. And this. The precise small movements of her fingers when her hands were at her sides. The sound of her breath. But some things were not the same, and Marianne wasn't quite sure what to do with those. Héloïse's posture had changed, perhaps because of the Italian fashion. She was more poised, less recalcitrant, playing the Lady. Marianne did not like the Lady. And she didn't seem to like Marianne much, either. If Héloïse was still angry- she had every right to be. Marianne had run her mouth, like an idiot, and if Héloïse had really taken offence, had really been hurt to the bone, then-

“Signora,” barked the housekeeper. _Christ_ but she could sneak up on someone. Marianne very narrowly avoided smearing a line of pink across the canvas.

“Yes, Theresa?” Aha. The devil had a name.

“The signorina is asking for you.”

Lady Mancini sighed. With great effort she rose from her chair. “Oh, well. It’s lunchtime, anyway. Marianne?”

“Madame?”

“I don’t think you’ll want to eat with us,” she said wryly. Though Marianne wanted for the sake of courtesy to disagree, she understood it as the dismissal it was.

“Your company is always a pleasure,” she returned politely.

“You are too kind, Marianne. Please. You're free to go.”

Marianne went. The housekeeper made an energetic effort at depositing her on her backside on the way out, and was very nearly successful.

Back in the house, most of the people were out, and the servant’s quarters were a cool respite from the afternoon heat. Marianne made her way through the winding corridors- this place was enormous, practically a palace- until she found the same dining room she had been in last night. The kitchen was through that hallway, but it was silent, and Marianne didn't want to to run into one of the people whose name she was expected to know.

“ _Salve_.”

Marianne whirled, startled, and found the girl- Lucia- sitting alone at the table. Her eyes were wide and curious, and she was on the low bench, so Marianne could scarcely see more than her shoulders poking up over the table. There was a book open in front of her, and she was, methodically, tearing apart a piece of bread. Marianne had to withhold a wince at the sight of the crumbs disappearing into the open pages.

“ _Salve_ ,” she said.

The girl regarded her for a long moment, then inclined her head toward the table. “You can sit if you want.”

Tiny and regal. Marianne stifled a smile and sat on the bench across from her.

“Do you want some bread?” Lucia asked. She tore a piece off and held it out.

“That’s very kind of you,” Marianne said, and accepted it. They sat in silence for a long moment. “Have you had lunch?”

“Not yet.”

“Shall I get some for us?”

“No,” the girl said quickly. Then, realising her error, “Maybe in a few minutes.”

Marianne knew that look. That was exactly the look that she herself had worn so many times, most infamously after she had tripped over a stool while in search of her father’s stash of bonbons and caught herself with a hand to the recently-finished face of Madame Vesault, smearing the paint from the nose down and earning herself a three-month ban on desserts. That was the face of a child who was not in the place she was meant to be.

“Okay,” she said peaceably, and stayed sitting. The girl looked immeasurably relieved.

“Thank you,” she said, and nothing more. As reticent as her mother, then.

Marianne chewed on the crust of bread and looked around. There were a few paintings on the walls, simple lovely things, flowers. Not done with finesse but certainly done with love. Some of them were in the Dutch style, like Frans Hals or something. Very colourful.

She felt something tap her knee under the table, and looked up. Very quickly Lucia’s head tipped back down over her book. She was still on the same page that she had been on two minutes ago.

“I didn’t mean to kick you,” the girl said, after a moment’s guilty silence.

“It’s alright.”

“Did it hurt?”

“No.”

Lucia frowned, giving up on the pretence of reading. “You made a face.”

“Just surprised.” Marianne tilted her head toward the open book. “What are you reading?”

“A book.”

More difficult than Marianne had anticipated, then. “Which book?”

The girl shrugged. “Poetry.”

“Not good?”

“It’s fine. Just boring.”

“Would you mind if I looked at it?”

The girl spun the book around, pushing it toward Marianne. “That’s the one I’m reading,” she said, and tapped the top of one page.

It began, _My most exalted Lord, I am writing this to let you know what my life is like._ Marianne wrinkled her brow and flipped it shut to check the cover. Vittoria Colonna, _Amaro Lagrimar_. A woman poet.

“Mama wants me to read it,” the girl said, confirming Marianne’s suspicions. “She thinks it’s good to know the women poets. Are you good at reading?”

Marianne considered it. “I don’t know. Is it possible to be good at reading?”

“Well, you can be bad. And if you can be bad at it then you can surely be good at it too.”

Her mouth twitched up. “Your logic is sound.”

“I’m not very good at reading.”

“No?”

The girl shook her head. “That’s what Signor Trizio says. I look at the words and they all jumble up. But then when he reads it out I understand.”

Interesting. Marianne glanced down at the page. “The letters jumble up, or the words?”

“The letters. And then the words don’t make any sense.”

Marianne hummed. In a neutral tone- no child liked to be talked down to- she said, “Would you like me to read it to you, then?”

“Yes, please,” the girl said, evidently relieved. “From _sempre nel mio cuore.”_

 _Credeva più benign avere i fati._ “I believed the fates would be kinder,” Marianne read. Something pricked at the inside of her chest. “I thought my many sacrifices and vows would satisfy hell’s instruments. There is no temple I have not cried in, no image I have not prayed to. _”_

“See!”

She looked up. “See what?”

“It’s all so complicated. What is she sacrificing? And,” the girl added, arms folding obstinately, “what’s the point of crying, anyway?”

“It’s good to cry sometimes,” Marianne said, trying to hide her smile. She had the feeling that Lucia, like her mother, would not take well to being laughed at.

“Yes, well, listen to her. She’s doing it all the time. Everywhere.”

“Maybe she’s troubled.”

“Then she should go fix it. Or just do something. Anything but cry all day.”

“An honourable idea,” Marianne agreed, and gave her a small salute. “If the world was full of people like you, we might all be living in the stars by now.”

The girl beamed at the praise, sitting up a little. “I wouldn’t want to live in the stars.”

“Why not?”

“Because they don’t move. So the weather would always be the same. And that wouldn’t be fair to the people who had to live in the night-time.”

That was very charming. “I admire your dedication to justice,” Marianne said, impressed.

“Mama says equality is very important.”

Marianne smiled at the thought- Héloïse bent at the waist, Lucia’s hand tugging at her skirts, a lesson taught over and over every day. “She’s right.”

“Papa says it’s ridiculous.”

_Papa._

Marianne had forgotten about the husband, in the way a wound forgets its pain when left untouched. The girl was still looking at her, so she managed a brief, “Does he?”

“I don’t know which of them is right,” she said, her little brow creasing. “I mean, I do. Mama says I know more than most grown-ups,” she added proudly, then lapsed back into thoughtfulness. “What do you think?”

Marianne leaned back in her seat. Father. _Your mother once said. Yes, very fond of it. Liked the cellos best._ In French she asked, “Have you ever been to the orchestra?”

“You mean where they play the music? Yes, for my birthday.”

“And you saw all the musicians on stage, right?”

“Yes,” the girl said slowly. “But what does that have to do with anything?”

“Imagine if you went to hear the music, and only half the musicians got to play.”

Lucia frowned. “It would be quiet.”

“Exactly. If only half the people in the world get to go around doing things, then-“ Marianne trailed off, hands opening in silent explanation.

“Then the other half don’t get to play.” When she was thinking her brow scrunched up, a gesture Marianne recognised. “And then the symphonies are boring.”

“And no one likes a boring symphony.”

“Signor Trizio does,” the girl said, with an expression of distaste. “But I hate the boring ones.”

“See? You understand. Signor Trizio is an idiot.”

The girl laughed, hands flying to her cheeks. That- _that_ \- was all Héloïse. “He is. He’s the worst. But Signor Scuola is bad too.”

Marianne shuddered in mock agony. “He sounds awful.”

“He only cares about the year that things happened in.” Lucia squared her shoulders and scowled, her mouth pursed. In a high-pitched approximation of a man’s voice she growled, “The Valtellina was conquered in 1335, not 1334. A duchess must understand the dukedom’s history!”

“Horrible!”

“And,” the girl continued, clearly inspired by Marianne’s amusement, “Signor Luchino is always going on about ancient Greek. Why should I have to know ancient Greek?”

“The only people who know ancient Greek are old and wizened.”

“Just like Signor Luchino!”

“Is he old?”

“So old.” Lucia leaned in; Marianne matched her til their heads were bent together, co-conspirators. “I think he is two hundred years old.”

“How do you think he has got by for two hundred years?”

“He eats nothing but biscotti and raw goat.”

Marianne widened her eyes in surprise. “Really!”

“And he drinks camel’s milk!”

“How does he find camel’s milk in Milan?”

“Dunno! But his breath sure stinks.”

Marianne barked out a laugh, caught by surprise. Oh, that was very rude. Héloïse would have been proud to hear it. “All your teachers are like that? Old?”

Lucia nodded. “And mean.”

“And boring?”

“Very.”

“And do they know anything?”

“Not a whit about anything that matters.”

“That sounds about right.”

“If you’re done demeaning my daughter’s tutors,” Héloïse said, very drily.

Marianne nearly lurched right out of her seat. She put a hand over her racing heart and turned to look at Héloïse, who was standing in the doorway wearing an arch expression, the very picture of a displeased mother. Lucia tried to shrink herself, wiggling down under the table so that she was only visible from the chin up. Marianne would have done the same if she was not the same age as Héloïse and also her lover. _Former_ lover.

“Lucia, where are you supposed to be right now?”

The girl averted her eyes.

“Lucia,” Héloïse said again, sterner.

“In the library,” Lucia mumbled.

“Signor Trizio is looking for you.”

“I know. I’m going.” Lucia hopped down from her bench and took the book from the table. Silently she handed it off to Héloïse, and looked back at Marianne, who offered her a commiserating expression.

“Bye, Marianne,” she said, with a small smile, and darted out of the room.

Which left her and Héloïse alone.

One benefit of the silence was that it gave Marianne ample time to calculate where she stood with Héloïse. She had aided and abetted her daughter’s delinquency. She had said- that, yesterday. They had not spoken for nearly a full day. They were not speaking right now.

Marianne had just about decided that she should inquire into finding other lodgings when Héloïse spoke.

“I’ll see you at dinner,” she said, more a question than a statement.

 _Forgiven._ “Yes,” Marianne said, so quickly that it was almost an interruption. She did not want Héloïse to change her mind.

Héloïse smiled, so slightly that if Marianne did not know every line of her face she would not have recognised it. The book of poetry shifted between her hands. “Good.”

She swept out of the room.

Marianne pressed a hand to her forehead and tried to control her breathing. Only a few hours to dinner. She could wait a few hours.

She could.


	7. sept

Dinner was awkward. Marianne did not know where to look. And Bianca hovered just behind her, knobby-kneed and polite, and Héloïse was wonderful and not polite at all, eating in quick elegant bites. She caught Marianne staring three times. Each time her head ducked, the inside of her cheek caught between her teeth, and she very carefully did not look back.

Lucia filled the silence with chatter. Signor Trizio’s lesson had been so boring, and the Colonna poem still made no sense, why would- then amending herself after seeing Héloïse’s arched eyebrow, but it was fine, and she could read the _credeva_ part better, he said she was improving.

“I’m not really,” she whispered, after dinner. Héloïse had gone, with a glance behind her, to help Sophie with the dishes, and thus Marianne was left as the person to confide in.

“You aren’t?”

“Improving. I just knew what you said and I repeated it.”

Marianne pressed her tongue to the back of her teeth. “The letters jumble?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And numbers?”

“No. Not really.”

“Does your mother know?”

Shame-faced Lucia looked down at the floor, and Marianne had her answer.

“She won’t be angry,” she said, gently.

“I know.” Her little face creased, mouth turning down and lips pressing tight. “But.”

They drank together in a side room, once Lucia had been put to bed. Wine. Italian, poured into thin-stemmed glasses. Héloïse ramrod straight in her chair. Sophie cross-legged, perched between them. As it had been before.

She and Marsilio had met years ago, Sophie explained, after they first arrived. He was two years older and engaged to be married, with a better job awaiting him in the bustling city. And she had been nineteen, still, with a limited grasp of Italian and no friends, brought to an unfamiliar city ages from home by a woman she had met scarcely a month ago. In the beginning it was hard. She was homesick. Cried often.

Héloïse’s face changed when she said so. Clearly it was something known to her- Sophie spoke freely, her foot nudging the side of Héloïse’s leg- but still the guilt ran deep, weighing down the corners of her mouth.

The plan had been to stay for six months. Héloïse and Marsilio had, separately, taught her Italian, Marsilio with clumsy gestures, learning French the whole way through. Four months in he had broken off his engagement. Then an increasingly complicated story, muddled still more by the wine- she had gone home for a few months, come back, courted Marsilio in the city. Héloïse brought him back on as the man of the kitchens when he asked. They had seriously discussed the idea of taking him home to France. And, against all odds, she had decided to stay.

“Four years now since I last went back,” Sophie said, with a wondering shake of her head. “Time flies.”

Marianne hummed in weary acknowledgment. Hot inside even in the evenings. It would be hours till it was cool enough to sleep. And Héloïse’s eyes were so gentle and sad.

“How long,” Marianne asked her, “since you’ve been back?”

Something shifted, some deep well of old hurt. Quietly Sophie drained her wine as if she already knew the answer. Which she did. She must have asked, sometime, if Héloïse would go with her.

“Ten years,” Héloïse said.

Oh.

The next morning Marianne woke just before, or perhaps on the tail end of, a knock at the door.

“Coming,” she called, groggily. The wine was still swimming behind her eyes. Sophie had poured and poured and poured and they had not let themselves be alone together even when she made to duck away. Wary still of the line that could be crossed. “Who is it?”

There was a pause. A breath. Marianne knew exactly who it was, then, and was reaching for her things folded beside the bed long before the answer came.

“Me,” said she. Then, because she was Héloïse, added, “Héloïse.”

The wine-daze faded (the headache remaining) and suddenly Marianne was alert, ear cocked for any sound as she dressed. She imagined her to be standing, stock-still, in the cloak, the blue one from the convent. Surely she did not still have it? Nicer clothes now. Wealthy family.

Marianne swallowed down how _that_ made her feel and went to the door, yanking it open.

Héloïse. Sure as the day and uncertain as a lamb. Her hair up. Not the blue cloak but something close, a simple grey dress that looked to be from the servants’ quarters. She did not greet Marianne though for a moment she seemed as though she would like to. Instead she swallowed, her throat bobbing a little, and turned on her heel to stride away.

“Where are we going?”

“The market.” A quick darting glance over her shoulder. “I promised to take you. If you would like to go.”

“Well,” Marianne said, teasing. “I’m quite busy, you know. Lots of appointments.”

In consternation Héloïse came to an abrupt halt and whirled, eyes searching Marianne’s face. “You don’t want to go? We can- if you want we can just-“

Years ago, days ago, Marianne would have kissed her. But they were not on kissing terms now. Or-?

“Lead the way,” she said instead. And watched the face relax and unspool, relieved.

In the market Héloïse was someone to be recognised. With impatient efficiency the merchants showed her what had just come in, what they had made, told her the prices, begrudgingly let themselves be haggled down. Héloïse, a pack slung over her shoulder, had never looked so natural here as she did arguing over the price of bread. Marianne watched her with hands deep in her pockets, smiling.

“Good tomatoes,” she said under her breath, head tipping toward a cart nearby. “But he’ll try to sneak a few soft ones in.” Or, about a pastry seller, “Stale sometimes if you come too late. Sells all the good ones early.” A seamstress’s shop. “Don’t let her feel the fabric or she’ll charge triple.” The whole of the plaza mapped out, all in her head.

From one of the bread stalls Héloïse bought a fresh _rosetta_ roll, the top brushed with olive oil and baked to a warm orange-gold. Her fingers sank deep, hooked, tugged apart, the warm white inside yielding easily beneath her careful touch. Shyly she offered Marianne the choice of the halves, one in each hand.

As Marianne took the half from her left hand she let her palm slide, deliberately, against Héloïse’s. Watched her eyes round and mouth open. And said, revelling quietly in the indulgence, “Thank you.”

They ate together as they walked. In the relative cool of the morning the crowds descended on the market, blinking themselves into waking, yawning, eating, arguing, laughing. Children dashed round their legs in boisterous pursuit, shouting choruses of “I’ll get you I’ll get you,” dirty up to the eyeballs as their mothers bellowed after them. Héloïse was a steady solid warmth beside her, ducking and bobbing up on her tiptoes to look at everything. Here and there she bought things- bright-red lumpy tomatoes, fat swollen grapes fit to burst- with coins plucked from somewhere in her pack. When Marianne turned to examine the fine cloth draped from a hook, Héloïse hung back and watched her, and where two old men sold miniatures she was a hot breath at Marianne’s ear, and then at the little bookstand they were side-by-side, Héloïse glancing over and pinkening when their gazes met.

It was there that the singing began, a wailing call that edged into a note and held. Héloïse looked up as if she had heard her name. Set down the book she had been inspecting. “Come,” she said quietly, and Marianne followed.

Between two stalls the busker swayed, hands clasped in front of her. Her voice had body to it, a soft raspy braying sound. It was a folk song she was singing. In a different language, from somewhere oceans away. Fitting.

Héloïse’s eyes closed. Her chin tipped skyward, she swayed. In her chest there was a hum wanting to break loose. Marianne could see it in the way she held her hands, her chest, her throat full to bursting.But she would not sing along today. She knew Marianne was looking at her, she knew, her head turned and she smiled and the morning caught her face, her eyelashes fine and dark aglow, the wrinkles by her mouth deepening, she knew and she smiled and she waited and she did not sing. Marianne lost all the pieces of her breath. Memorising even now how the light made way for her.

The song finished to muted approval and Héloïse was still for a moment. Then her eyes opened and she dropped a few coins in the hand and on they went to the next stall.

“Mushrooms,” she said, still hushed for just a moment. She picked one up, a white-stemmed large mushroom with a heavy brown cap, smelled it, then nodded. “ _Prugnoli_. Just picked. Still smells of the forest.”

She tossed it back in the crate with its cousins. Marianne did not dare pick up the same one. Instead she turned to a nearby, smaller crate, and put her hand round one of the littler mushrooms, a wrinkled pale honeycomb cap without its stem. She lifted it to her nose to smell, copying.

“Don’t!” Héloïse cried urgently, and the mushroom was smacked out of her hand with surprising force. Marianne pulled back her hand as if scalded. Had she-? No. Surely not.

“Hey!” snapped the seller, making his way over. “You’ll have to-“

In quick furious Italian Héloïse berated him. How could he leave out a crate of, yes she knew they were edible but they were _toxic_ when raw, did he know there were children about, too, what if they had- yes, keep them further back. Then she pulled Marianne away into the crowd, colour still high in her cheeks, and said, “Excuse me. I didn’t mean to hit you.”

“You didn’t,” Marianne said, still startled. “What were those?”

“ _Verpe._ Seller's apprentice.” Again, contrite, “I really am sorry. Did I hurt you?”

With butterfly hands she fretted at Marianne’s fingers, paint dried under the nails. It was the first time Héloïse had touched her since the library. They must have realised at the same time because Héloïse stopped, her hand resting, just slightly, on Marianne’s wrist. It was a difficult thing to bear. And yet the easiest in a long while.

“Oh,” Héloïse said, unsurprised, soft. As if she felt it too.

Lady Mancini again today. The familiar routine- Theresa opened the door, scoffed, and brought her to the sitting room where the lady already sat, propped up in her chair like a corpse on display.

They spoke here and there. Marianne could hardly focus, eyes skittering, mouth dry, thinking of next door. The oppressive heat made it all even worse. She wiped her brow over and over, draped a cool rag over the back of her neck even though it was bad form. Lady Mancini, dressed all in black, seemed to move even less than usual.

“The heat, is it,” she said sympathetically, when Marianne paused to drink. Christ, even the water was warm. “Hard to do anything.”

“Mm,” Marianne agreed, tired. Might as well bring it up now. “The madame seems not to do well with it.”

The lady paused. Then she barked out an unexpected laugh and asked, “Has she been rude to you, then?” Without waiting for an answer she continued, “Yes, I expect she has. Excuse her. She does not like painters. Nor houseguests. Disturbs her cleaning.”

That was her, then. Fastidious neatness. Marianne imagined her bustling through the empty palace, alone, from room to empty room. Never picking anything up or putting anything away. Just sweeping off the dust that would soon return, and when she finished all the rooms inevitably she would start all over again. Unexpectedly Marianne felt a sharp pang of sympathy. It was a wonder that anyone could stand to be so lonely.

“I will ask her to be more polite,” the lady said. Her hands folded in her lap, back to her pose. “She feels- protectively.”

By the tone of her voice Marianne understood that this was not a subject she could press. She returned to glowering at the painting, frustratingly unfinished. Maybe Héloïse would know. Or Sophie, more likely.

“Oh, Lord,” Sophie sighed, and tossed her a rag. “Wipe the table down, will you?”

Marianne wiped in silence and waited for her answer. The other maids scurried round them as Sophie considered her words, tongue between her teeth.

“Husband died,” she said finally. “Off the drink. Finances bad. The girl was with child when the father ran off. And both her and the nurse ill now.”

“Hardly the time for a portrait,” Marianne said, carefully.

“No,” Sophie agreed. “Hardly.”

“And the housekeeper?”

“Nursed the girl. Stuck around.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.” Quickly, efficiently, she plucked the rag from Marianne’s hands, and shot her a meaningful look. “Same reason I did, maybe.”

That evening Lucia was much less animated. She crossed her arms and obstinately shook her head when pressed to eat. Upon closer inspection she was sallow and feverish and Héloïse promptly declared she was to go to bed.

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

She kicked her stubby little legs against the underside of the table. “Wanna stay,” she muttered.

“You won’t miss much,” Héloïse said lightly. “Other than your dinner, of course. But something can be arranged.”

She was in a good mood. Worried. But a good mood. It was odd seeing her put the back of her hand to the child’s forehead. Petulant and pouting she looked like a tiny Héloïse.

“Come,” she said, beckoning as she stood. “Bedtime for the little patient.”

Lucia glanced quickly between Héloïse and Marianne. “I _will_ ,” she said.

“You’ll do what?”

“Miss something.”

“And what is that, exactly?”

She shrugged, slumping down in her seat. Did she mean-?

“We’ll have breakfast tomorrow, then,” Héloïse decided. She shot Marianne a look, eyebrows raised. “If Marianne is not too busy.”

“Marianne is not too busy,” Marianne said, and took another bite. “If Lucia is not too busy either.”

The girl smiled, reluctantly. “No,” she admitted. “But Signor Luchino starts at nine.”

Marianne wrinkled her nose. “Greek for breakfast?”

“A terrible fate,” Héloïse said solemnly. “Come, away.”

“Like a little duckling,” she said, the next morning. Lucia had yet to come down and it was Sophie’s day off, which meant that they were alone in the small side room that Héloïse preferred. Idly Marianne had been examining the reflection of their wrists in the polished tabletop. Now she looked up, caught off-guard.

“Hm?”

Héloïse had an odd look on her face, almost a smile but for the crease running down between her brows. “A duckling,” she repeated. Two of her fingers toddled across the table, toward Marianne. “She told me last night she wants to take up painting.”

“Oh,” Marianne said, unsure. She did not seem hurt. Or pleased. Or anything. She looked as if she was trying to understand something which Marianne could not begin to fathom. “Is that-?”

“Yes,” she answered, then puffed out a breath. “I do wish it were less easy to be fond of you.”

Startled, Marianne met her eyes, her wry smile. She dared to ask, “Are you?”

“Fond of you?”

“Yes.”

“If I were not,” she said, suddenly shuttered, “do you think I would still be married now?”

Marianne flinched. Instantly the shutters dropped but Héloïse did not take it back. Instead she picked up her little cup of coffee and started to stir it, counter-clockwise then clockwise again.

In silence they avoided each other. Dancing, dancing. How could it be that just a few days ago they were on the cusp of lovers again? Too caught up, Marianne thought. Too giddy at the prospect of seeing her again.

She looked down at the table.

“The strangest thing,” said Héloïse, suddenly, “is that I could know you so well-" the tiny clink of her cup being set down- "and yet not know you at all."

No. "You do."

Something broke a little behind Héloïse's face, coming apart, wrinkling. "How can you be so sure?"

"I am in Milan."

"For a week."

"It can be enough." She knew even in the saying it was a lie. Still she pressed on. Trying for levity, mindful of the listening walls, she said, "I am braver now."

“Yet I am here,” Héloïse said, matter-of-fact. With the tiniest tilt of her head she indicated the vastness of the dining room table. “And there are you.”

In silence her spoon crashed banged gonged against the inside of the cup. And with every clink Marianne was even more a coward.

 _Say something,_ she thought, furious at herself. But what? _I adore you. I cannot afford to spend another minute without your knowing it. It is not only my bravery but yours too. Would you? If I asked?_

“Mama,” came the shout. “Mama, are you in there?”

“Here,” Héloïse called. She looked at Marianne once more- a cynic’s look, suddenly older, suddenly exhausted, and shrugged, as if to say, 'is this all, then?'

"Héloïse," Marianne said, urgent. She put her hand on the table, palm facing up. Just within reach. And said, again, "Héloïse."

She blinked. _Yes. Please understand. Please._

"After," she whispered.

_Understood._


End file.
